The tech stock bubble wielded the pin and popped itself, not all that different from the Smartest Guys in the Investment Rooms killing their own golden geese. One obvious difference ~ the millions of people who got burned by the tech boom/bust bit their own biscuit. I didn't have to foot their worthless bill.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br>[color:white]xx</font color=white>[color:blue]I always deserve it. Really.</font color=blue><br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>It seems now unbelievable but he actually finished with a balanced budget.<p><hr></blockquote><p> I read somewhere that budget, if you figured in the IOUs for what was taken from Social Security, was far from balanced. <br><br>Old farts, the hidden caulk of civilization. Jim Atkinson<br><br>

<br>... but his conclusion that banking needs less regulation is unsound in that it might work on a national basis, but not in a global environment.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>"Woe the nation, which has no heros. ...... Blessed the one, which needs none!" (Bertold Brecht)

<br>.. I don't really know, polly.<br>The tech boom was an overheating self-destructing bubble, and in many ways, his housing policies, which indeed add revenues back then, also contributed to the mortgage crisis. Balanced, yes. For how long? We'll never know.<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>"Woe the nation, which has no heros. ...... Blessed the one, which needs none!" (Bertold Brecht)

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>There was the tech stock bubble bursting in 2000 and millions of people are made to work many more years because their retirement was hosed. Thanks Bill for minding the fort. How quickly we forget.<p><hr></blockquote><p>That bubble bursting is a perfect example of how Bill Clinton was minding the fort. How quickly you forget too.<br><br>It wasn't a tech bubble but a biotech bubble that burst in March of 2000. Biotech stocks had gone through the roof and anyone from Affymetrix to Applied Biosystems who owned stock or worked in those companies were insufferable in their giddiness at new found wealth when thy visited my lab that spring. Normal every day people had become suddenly rich when meager stock options became gold.<br><br>But biotech was being oversold a bit. And greed went too far. You point out retirees lost their shirt? What kind of stupid retiree invests heavily in speculative stock before retirement? Greedy ones willing to take a risk for great wealth.<br><br>And how did the biotech bubble pop? Why it was Bill Clinton and Tony Blair! Clinton was not only minding the fort he did something about it. In a joint statement they said that the speculation and patenting of raw gene sequence was wrong and might need to be regulated. This was followed by a large popping sound and biotech stocks returned from their artificially inflated prices to ones where the P/E ratios actually made sense.<br><br>What Clinton did was a preemptory strike on an over heated speculative market. We now have an example in the housing market what happens if you do not have a proactive president but one who sits and waits for disaster to happen. A 700 billion dollar bail out.<br><br>Clinton left with a budget surplus and a market that had corrected itself with only a tweak by Clinton and Blair. Then Bush shows up. We know what happened then.<br><br>ps. DRJohn: yes if long term predictions like social security are factored in the surplus could have registered as negative. But the way we calculate the debt is the same throughout and continues today. If you use your books Bush would even have a scarier debt hole that we are currently in. The fact remains that during the Clinton administration the deficit shrank precipitously year after year and the debt might have actually had a couple of dollars paid off it near the end of the eight years.<br><br>

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>and in many ways, his housing policies, which indeed add revenues back then, also contributed to the mortgage crisis. Balanced, yes. For how long? We'll never know.<p><hr></blockquote><p>This is another one that gets my goat. That Bill Clinton's deregulation in 1999 cause the mortgage crisis of 2008.<br><br>A serious WTF here.<br><br>Clinton and others made it much easier to get a mortgage. Anyone buy a house after 2000? You may have to thank Bill Clinton. But then Bill Clinton left office and stuff happened. Financial firms over a period of the last eight years pushed those new more lax rules to the hilt. Everyone was happy but someone should have been minding the store (or the fort) but no one was. The policies should have been looked at but no one was willing to add back any regulations. That would have taken some guts but no one had them. A deregulating President at the helm made that impossible. There were warnings during the run up that the over heated housing market needed regulation but all of that advice went unheeded. <br><br>So instead we end up with a very expensive mess. It isn't the last one. Our national debt run up will be our next very expensive mess as we end up using most of the tax revenue of our kids to pay interest on it. Social Security will be another one that a small tweak in the age requirements now would fix but instead we will make sure it becomes an expensive mess. No one has the guts to deal with it. But to blame Clinton because of a 1999 bill for what is happening now is ludicrous.<br><br><br><br>

I will also add that even though the rules were relaxed, and Clinton did sign off on Gramm's bill, ... NO one held a gun to the heads of the mortgage lenders and said give this $25,000 income / year worker a mortgage on a $300,000 home! They did it out of greed in making wads of money on risky deals.<br>It was the greed of the industry that contributed to most of it - course opening the door was a mistake. But McCain and most the GOP incl. Newt, DeLay, Gramm all of them, had pushed deregulation for years !<br><br>You can't trust most businesses to police themselves... they're like pigs at a feeding trough (minus the lipstick).. <br>some of the blame goes to investors who expected high margins of return on ordinary investments.<br><br>What I want to know is, "Is Congress going to haul these Wall ST liars who testified a few months ago , 'everyhting is fine" back into Congress and slap them with purgery charges ?<br><br>Found out today a spokesman for the Bush WH said Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke had been working on this proposal for weeks, if not months ! OH really, and Congress is supposed to pass it in a week !! <br><br>I gotta stop... I"M BOILING MAD!!! <br><br><br>David (OFI)

"Found out today a spokesman for the Bush WH said Bush, Paulson, and Bernanke had been working on this proposal for weeks, if not months ! OH really, and Congress is supposed to pass it in a week !! "<br><br>The story here in Finland and in Sweden is/was, Finland's Central Bank was being asked about our 90's national bank crisis already in spring this year, but that was all they were willing to comment on it. And then the Swedes, I read in one of their dailies...well, according to their Central Bank, their representative was in Washington quite a few times during the past few months. So, at least they were preparing for a potential crisis.<br><br>Yay, it's fun to live in a country that has been a kind of a test lab on how to recover from a bank crisis with taxpayer money, and quite frankly, this country hasn't even recovered fully from that one, despite the official mantra.<br><br>

As you said, McCain, Gramm voted for the bill. If you look at the actual roll call of the vote 53 Republicans and only one Democrat voted for the bill. 44 Senators, all Democrats voted against it.<br><br>Clinton signed it into law but did any of these senators keep tabs on how the bill was used by the financial firms over the next eight years?<br><br>

Yeah I noticed that- right down party lines...<br>you know none of the GOP kept tabs, all they did to the financial wizards on Wall St was <br>... but the Dems should have... however they can't call people in to testify (keep tabs) when the GOP runs the Congress 1995 - 2007. The GOP set the agenda. Wasn't going to happen !!<br><br>Furthermore, the oversight is supposed to come from the Executive Branch, i.e. the FEC, FED, Treasury etc... and under Bush they turned a blind eye !!<br><br>So though Clinton shares some responsibility for buying their crap, 90% of the failure goes to the GOP... the deregulator pushers and the Bushies lack of oversight.<br><br>David (OFI)

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